Dc school thinking about becoming an academy.

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The school have outlined their reasons for considering it and they are holding a meeting for parents to attend next week.

Just looking for others thoughts/experiences? What are the pros and cons of a school taking on academy status? I've heard some good and some not so good things.

The first thing to say is that you need to establish why the school is considering becoming an academy. If it is because the school is in some kind of category then when they say that they are considering becoming an academy, it is more a matter of they have to become an academy and join a MAT.
If the school is good or better then I would wonder what is being proposed. There is now more or less a restriction on becoming an stand alone academy, you have to be part of a MAT. So I would question whether the school is aware of this. In which case I question the amount of background work the school have done to decide to become an academy. If they do know that they have to sign up as what is often called an "empty MAT" it is on the basis that the school will join with other schools to form a MAT in the near future. If they are not telling you this, then I wonder what else they are neglecting to tell you.
The pros and cons very much depend on the individual school's situation.

Budget could be the reason if a school is good or outstanding, MATs share training, staff, insurance, resources etc between a few schools so there is an economy of scale. I doubt that a school would be asking for a meeting with parents without having done their homework to be honest. loads of schools are doing because of financial pressure.

The school is rated good and will be joining an already existing MAT. From what they've said it could be for budget reasons.

I've written about this before - it often makes sense.

Every single secondary school in our town is an Academy and all but a couple of Primaries are too.

When DD’s Primary converted we noticed no difference at all. It was a non event in many ways for parents and pupils.

No advice from a parents perspective I’m afraid as mine aren’t at the school stage yet.

But from a teachers perspective with 20/20 hindsight, I’d run as fast as I could in the opposite direction!

Becoming part of a MAT was the worst thing our school could have done unfortunately. On Wednesday I will be handing in my notice to leave at Easter and crossing my fingers that I manage to find another job.

In my LA, very few primaries have become academies. All the secondary schools have. The Government has dropped forcing them to convert so they have, mostly, dropped the notion.

Where they have converted, they have been C of E, or RC schools so belong to these MATs. However, they were always religious in character so leaned that way anyway. I also think some Heads fancy themelseves for promotion within the MAT. Some have executive Heads that are paid £150,000. For the ambitious Head, this is the way forward. I am not convinced it is for the children or the staff!

Where I was a Governor, the Head wanted it. The GB is now looking into it. The Head is ultra ambitious.

I think a lot will depend on the individual MAT. Some are probably better than others. If it's a good MAT, it should be able to provide good back-office support (e.g. help with HR, budget planning, IT support, facilities management etc) to allow your head and teachers to focus on improving teaching and learning. It should also allow opportunities for increased levels of school to school support. The flip side is that your school will probably loose some of its autonomy and may be less responsive to parents / teachers / kids in the individual school because the MAT will be trying to focus on the needs of all parents / teachers / kids throughout the MAT.

Some really helpful replies. Thanks everyone.

My experience of a MAT was that they didn't want any experienced teachers as they were too expensive so they were awful to us and we all left. I think high staff turnover is very common soon after conversion.

I would also think that if they've got to the point of holding a meeting about it with parents then the academisation is very likely to go ahead. IME the consultation period was very much lip-service.

I'm sure there are people who've had better experiences than me though!

Yes I am thinking it's lip service too. They said the 'proper thing to do is to give parents a chance to have their say before a decision is made' but imo they've already made the decision. That's just the impression I get from the wording on the letter anyway.

I guess time will tell! Hopefully it works out and nothing much really changes unless it's for the better.

I hope teachers aren't forced out of the school as a lot of them are great and it would be a shame for them to go.

The governing body of our local secondary (already an academy, was proposing to join a MAT) voted against the proposal following (though not necessarily as a result of) the consultation period. So it's not always a done deal by that point. The head, who had vigorously promoted this course of action, is still very vocally smarting, several months later.

I cannot see why people think Mats are better for advice, economies of scale back room services. No school operates in a vacuum right now.

My LA has set up a Trust and we buy services from them. We choose what we want from the menu and different levels of service are available. Schools who are red or amber light have a lot more support so they don’t fail Ofsted inspections. I personally cannot see how a MAT, which can be much smaller, can beat the service from the LA’s trust.

Therefore I think looking to form a MAT or be part of a small one is more to do with ambition rather than hard facts or an improvement for the children. The money for expensive Heads has to come from somewhere and it’s usually cheaper classroom teachers. In the primary sector I would be very wary.

Services from LA's trust? What service? In my local area these have been cut by over 80% (I'm a governor in a primary school which is not an Academy).

DH is deputy head in a MAT. They can afford regular, good quality training for their staff. At the school where I am a governor, the budget for training is at present non existent.

My school has to pay daily rates for supply. These as you know are very expensive. As part of a MAT they have permanent staff members who will go from school to school to provide cover. They get to know the kids, the schools and styles of teaching a lot more. They also provide for PPT.

They share the cost of building insurance, maternity cover/insurance, IT support, admin support, can help cover for senior staff so there's no gap in management. They share knowledge and methodology.

Not all schools are suitable to be part of a MAT, but I have seen quite a few examples where it has worked very well and the positive impact on the children's education and wellbeing is visible.

Most of those things you mention are in our package from the trust. You will not get any of the services for nothing!!! It all costs. We have insurance for staff absence. Buildings are insured centrally.

Services have not disappeared by 80%. Schools have been given the funds via the formula to buy the services. We buy them from our LA Trust. Schools can buy from other providers if they wish. There are other providers in the market place.

The LA formed the Trust to provide services to schools. It covers finance, HR, payroll, school improvement and advice, buildings, Sen advice, CPD, Governor services, bursar support, it support, sports advice, etc etc.

Our DH does all our supply. If a mat has floating staff, the schools are paying for it. No service is ever free but our trust works like a mat but it’s the LA that formed it to provide continuity. That’s why we have few primary academies. Little point.

A mat will withhold money from the schools to pay for central services or they will devolve finance to the schools and you buy in services from them. There is no magic model that gives you more money and free services!

I assume that not all LAs have not bothered to set up a Trust so you don’t get the services from them but you have the devolved money. It’s a big mistake for LAs not to have done this for all sorts of reasons.

OK i'll try to explain. For example, our local authorities provide a buildings insurance for all schools that they can take or leave. Say this insurance was £8,000 a year for our school (not the real figure), back in 2015-6. Our school questioned the cost of this thinking it was very high, so we joined up with other local schools to 'shop around' and found that if we'd join up with a few other schools we could get the insurance for £4,000. The LA then turned around all apologetic stating that they could now offer the deal for £4,500. They had been screwing the schools out of their money for years and years. WHo would you go with then? local authorities or set up your own?

Guess which one we chose?

This is interesting as we had a similar letter last week from our DC school, with a consultation meeting next week for parents. I'm struggling to see what the benefit will be to children and staff. The school is outstanding (and really is a wonderful school with wonderful staff) and they're proposing joining AET. I've done a quick Google of AET and am not impressed. Does anyone have experience of joining AET?

We just do not work like that where I am. The building belongs to the LA. They insure it. It is way chaper than doing it ourselves or even banding together with a few schools. They insure several hundred schools. They are responsible for major building work, not us. We are responsible for maintenance. Who has what responsibility is clearly documented.

I do accept some LAs are naff. We prefer our Head to work on improving the schol, not getting quotes for insurance. Ditto the Governors. We do have choice over IT and tend to do our own thing on that. Some schools do not want to, and buy in from the Trust. Our Head is an expert in assessment and progress and wanted an IT system to meet the needs of the schoool before the LA Trust system was up and working. So we did our own thing. Many schools went with the LA Trust's system. We use the Trust's system for all finance, payroll and official returns. We just do not want to spend time going to individual providers when we are satisfied with the quality of service and price. Spending time researching other providers takes a huge amount of time (and money) and we do not believe they are better for us. We prefer to keep our eyes on the ball of school improvement and our children.

There is absolutely no need to join a MAT if your LA has a not for profit Trust and is working hard for school improvement. Moving away is time consuming, takes resources away from what they should be doing and, guess what, MAT staff are all ex LA staff anyway. Expert staff do not grow on trees and they are exactly the same people and possibly ex Heads on more money. Who would think that was a great deal? There is no other source of staff than ex LA staff in the higher posts. You can get admin posts filled from outside, but a school improvement specialist will have done that work for an LA or Ofsted.

I do not know the MAT you mention, Schumann, but I would look at my comments above and wonder if your Outstanding Head wants a new challenge and joining a MAT is the next career move!

Yes Bubblesbuddy, I was wondering that too!

Schumann. If it’s not a very good mat, there will be opportunities for an outstanding head. Executive head of several schools and a nice big salary to match maybe? They may be actively recruiting schools to get talent and upgrade their profile.

Bubbles,
I suspect that your LA has not set up a Trust, it will have set up a non profit making Community Interest Company to provide services to the Education sector.
The problem is that whilst they may be working hard for school improvement, there is a need to look back at all the schools that have been in LA control, have failed and are now Academies. The LAs are far from the panacea for resolving all issues, which you seem to suggest. Just like Academies are not the whole answer. The answer is the right people running the schools for the circumstances of that school.